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Sleepless in America - TyroneShoes - 11-28-2014
Beginning November 30th, this documentary will begin airing on the Nat Geo channel.
I have no review; I have no idea whether it will be informative or a waste of time (lots of docs turn out to be one or the other). Remains to be seen (literally).
But this is simply an alert for those that might be interested.
RE: Sleepless in America - surferdude2 - 11-28-2014
Thanks for the reminder TS, I'll put that on my daily pop-up calendar. I had heard of it before but evidently failed to make note and would have missed it if not for your heads-up. I doubt there will be any revelations that us hose heads haven't already heard but perhaps it'll help some of the sleep doctors understand our dilemma better.
RE: Sleepless in America - TyroneShoes - 11-28-2014
You are very welcome, and that is sort of why I qualified it as such. There are folks on this very forum (and I am not among them) that have probably expended a lot more effort towards understanding this issue that a journalist that decides to mount a project about it for a month.
FWIW, I see it as just one more tool, with the possibility of teaching me a thing or two I just don't know yet. We'll see.
I am disturbed by how easily influenced we all are (which is why there is a thriving, 100-year-old multibillion $ ad industry). The classic example is Consumer Reports. They always sound like experts; always sound like they know exactly what they are doing regarding every subject. That is, until they pick a subject you or I might actually know something about. Then, they are revealed as three interns test-driving the features and the UL capabilities of 15 coffeemakers for a week, while some writer spends an hour summing it all up in the proper number of column inches, rather than actually being the be-all end-all authority they position themselves as.
After watching certain lame and misinformed docs on Discovery Health, it is easy to become pre-emptively skeptical when something like this appears.
RE: Sleepless in America - zonk - 11-28-2014
Trailer http://www.apneaboard.com/forums/Thread-News-%E2%80%9CSleepless-in-America%E2%80%9D-National-Geographic-Special
The State of Sleep Deprivation in America
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/sleepless-in-america/articles/the-state-of-sleep-deprivation-in-america/
If you’re able to pause between sips of coffee or Red Bull and keep your eyes open long enough to read this message, please pay heed. You need to start regularly getting an adequate night’s sleep. Not enough rest is bad for your physical and mental health, and even have deadly consequences.
The Mayo Clinic, one of the nation’s most prestigious medical institutions, recommends on its website that adults get seven to eight hours of sleep each night. But a lot of Americans disregard that advice. A 2009 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 35.3 percent of Americans reported that they typically got less than seven hours of sleep daily.
Part of the reason is that sleep is really important for maintaining our overall health according to the National Institutes of Health. During deep sleep, growth hormone is released in children and young adults and cells use the downtime to repair themselves from damage caused by stress and exposure to ultraviolet rays. The break seems especially crucial for the brain, whose nerve cells, or neurons, can become so energy-depleted and polluted with waste products from normal cellular activity that they may begin to malfunction if you stay awake. Some parts of the brain that control emotions, decision-making processes, and social interactions show drastically reduced activity, which suggests that adequate rest is also critical to their waking function.
Research suggests that regular sleep helps the brain put in extra work, like an athlete trying to get better by working out in the off-season. Based on research with rats, for example, scientists believe that nerve-signaling patterns are repeated during deep sleep, which may help encode memories and improve learning.
While we don’t generally think of sleep deprivation as a massive public health problem in America, medical research suggests that inadequate sleep plays a factor in a surprising array of maladies, according to Sleep Disorders and Sleep Deprivation, a compendium of sleep research studies published by The Institute of Medicine. Here are a few of the more serious ones.
• Obesity: Studies show that the less that you sleep, the greater the likelihood that you’ll pack on the pounds. In one study, subjects in their twenties who got less than six hours of sleep each night were 7.5 times likely to have a higher body mass index than people who got adequate sleep, even when family history, the amount of exercise, and other factors were accounted for. Studies suggest that not getting enough sleep can contribute to lower levels of leptin, a hormone that controls appetite, and higher levels of ghrelin, which tends to make you more ravenous.
• Diabetes: A 2005 study found that middle-aged and older adults who got six hours of sleep each night were 1.7 times more likely to develop diabetes, and those who got five hours or less were 2.5 times as likely.
• Cardiovascular disease and hypertension: A 2011 study published in Journal of the American Heart Association reported that people who suffered from insomnia had between a 27 and 45 percent increased risk of having a heart attack, in which a part of the heart muscle becomes blocked and can’t get oxygen. Another study, published in 2013 in European Heart Journal, found that chronic insomniacs had three times the risk of heart failure, in which the heart is so weakened that it can’t pump enough blood to meet the body’s needs. A study published in the journal Stroke in 2014 reported that people who suffered from insomnia also had a 54 percent higher chance of being hospitalized for a stroke over a four-year period.
• Immune system: According to the Mayo Clinic’s website, sleep deprivation can contribute to decreased production of proteins called cytokines, which your body needs when you have an infection or inflammation, and also hinders infection-fighting antibodies and cells. A study published in 2012 in the journal Sleep reported that subjects who got less than six hours of sleep were 11.5 less likely to get protection from hepatitis B vaccination than others who slept seven or more hours.
In addition to the physiological effects of sleeplessness, it can also have damaging effects on mental health, because sleep regulates the brain’s flow of chemicals such as epinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin, which are closely linked to mood and behavior.
“Mood and sleep use the same neurotransmitters,” Dr. Joyce Walseben, a psychiatrist and the former director of Bellevue Hospital’s Sleep Disorders Center, explained in a 2013 Atlantic magazine article. “It’s very hard to tell if someone has sleep loss or depression.”
When those neurotransmitters are disrupted, it can cause chemical changes in your brain, resulting in swings from manic highs to angry, depressed lows, so that a sleep-deprived person starts to look like someone suffering from bipolar disorder.
Inadequate rest also increases a person’s risk of having accidents. By now, you probably know that it’s not a good idea to drive after having had a few drinks, because driving under the influence is not only illegal, but potentially deadly. But oddly, many of us are willing to get behind the wheel even though we haven’t had enough sleep the night before. According to the Federal Centers for Disease Control, as many as 6,000 fatal crashes are caused each year by drowsy drivers, who are less attentive, have slower reaction time, and an impaired ability to make decisions. A 2009 CDC study reported that 4.7% of drivers reported nodding off or falling asleep while driving at least once in the preceding month.
And more than a quarter admitted that sometime in the month before the survey, they’d driven despite being so tired that they had difficulty keeping their eyes open. "Most of us believe that there are a lot more fall asleep crashes than reported," Dr. Allan Pack, director of the Center for Sleep at University of Pennsylvania, told ABC News in 2011."This is probably just the tip of the iceberg. It's probably not reported accurately because a number of states don't even having a 'falling asleep while driving' tick in the box when reporting a car crash."
Add up all of those effects, and the result may be a shortened lifespan. In a study published in 2010 in the journal Sleep, researchers reported that over a 14-year period, men who complained of chronic insomnia and routinely slept for less than six hours a night were four times more likely to die.
But the upshot of all this is that you need to make a habit of getting a good night’s sleep, to avoid potentially serious health problems. Or, to look at it in a more positive way, if you get adequate rest, your body and mind are going to work and feel better.
RE: Sleepless in America - surferdude2 - 11-28-2014
The older I get the more I realize that you can prove anything you choose to with a research study. You can also cite statistics to justify nearly anything, even use them to win either side of a debate! We must be careful not to give anyone the last word on anything and especially not give anybody total command over our health care. That'll happen soon enough without our approval but by then it won't matter as much.
As Yogi Berra is said to have so eloquently put it, "You can see a lot just by observing."
I have my own order of business that I try to follow. I call it "The Love Method" and it goes like this: Listen>Observe>Verify>Exercise. Listen to all opinions, Observe the results of others, Verify what is presented as fact and then Exercise caution when applying any of it. After it passes my "Love Test", I go ahead and do whatever I think is right, even if it might not be right for others.
I would prefer to go to a doctor who has the same malady as I but that's often hard to pull off since I don't get much time to interview them. They all seem to be in a big rush and I wonder if they're actually getting anything done properly. My late father once told me that anyone who is continuously rushing around usually wasn't getting as much done as the person who always seemed to be caught up and never looked very busy.
Your doctor's diagnosis can be made much more accurate if you will take an active interest and give him as much detail as you can. If he cuts you short, get another doctor.
RE: Sleepless in America - surferdude2 - 11-30-2014
I enjoyed that presentation of "Sleepless In America" tonight but missed part of it due to distractions. It'll be repeated at 10 PM CST tonight (11/30) but it's 2 hours so I can't hold out that long. I see it's going to be broadcast again on Dec. 7th at 8 AM CST (Sunday morning) so I'll make a point of getting it then. That's on the History channel so give it a peek.
RE: Sleepless in America - Evpraxia - 12-01-2014
Zonk,
Interesting info! I don't know if you have ever seen Mythbusters but they did a segment on driving sleep deprived Vs driving tipsy/almost drunk - the driving sleep deprived (30 hours without sleep) was 3-10 times more dangerous than driving tipsy. Yes, most of us would not drive after 30 hours of no sleep (that is like pulling an all-nighter at work after working a full day shift) but I have done it and it was not good at all.
RE: Sleepless in America - PaytonA - 12-01-2014
Been there. Done that. Luckily no one has the scars to show for it.
RE: Sleepless in America - TyroneShoes - 12-04-2014
(12-01-2014, 09:48 PM)PaytonA Wrote: Been there. Done that. Luckily no one has the scars to show for it.Reminds me of that comedian that said "I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my great uncle Barney did; not screaming in terror like the passengers in his car were".